Kerry James Marshall Painting Could Set Artist Record at Sotheby’s

At its evening sale of contemporary art on May 16, Sotheby’s will offer Kerry James Marshall’s 1997 painting Past Times with an estimate of $8 million to $12 million, and if the work reaches even the low end of that range, it will set a new record for the artist’s work at auction. The top figure currently stands at $5.04 million, the price paid for Still Life With Wedding Portrait (2015) at Christie’s New York last November.

Past Times, which is being sold by the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority in Chicago, appeared prominently in Marshall’s recent mid-career retrospective, “Kerry James Marshall: Mastry,” which ran at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

In a statement to press, Saara Pritchard, a senior specialist at the house, said, “Artistically complex, politically engaged and career-defining, [Past Times] is an awe-inspiring work of art; standing in front of this astonishing painting, one uncovers layers of meaning and discovery in each and every detail of this richly-laden work.”